We checked out the Macy’s flower show thing this morning. I had read about how Macy’s had decided to move it from the 8th floor auditorium down to the 1st floor shopping area and I was curious as to how the new location would come off.
The comments from flower show rubes in the paper were mixed. Samples:
“I liked it better on the eighth floor than spread around, but this is gorgeous.” — Rube
“You can’t really enjoy the full beauty of the flowers. Your eyes are drawn to the Chanel counter.” — Rube
“I thought it would be a negative, having it with the clothing, but it’s not.” — Rube
I was a obviously little skeptical about going, but after last year’s pants-pissingly good show – and plenty of other nice shows over the years – I felt sorta obligated to at least go down there and render judgment for myself.
And now the truth: it was stupid. No wait, it was insulting. No wait, I was right the first time, it was just kinda stupid. You basically get one nice long hallway of ‘arrangements’ that run the length of the perfume and cosmetic departments. Talk about sensory overslap. On your left, a superb collection of exotic flowers delight the eyes and awaken the nose while the soft chants of Ladysmith Black Mambazo tickle your ears from well-hidden speakers. On your right – 3 feet to your right – some chick in tight pants and a fashion-forward hoodie smiles out from her techno music lipgloss factory. She’s nice enough for sure, but you both know that you’re not there to buy lipgloss – and neither is the dude wearing Wrangler’s and a Polaris jacket in front of you. And neither are most of the other people walking around. And that’s when you realize that what’s making you so mad is that while you’ve always understood the point of the flower show was to get you to come down to the store, on some level it was still supposed to be about a big department store giving something back to – maybe even building – the community. And when they put the begonias next to the Tag Heuer, the shallowness of the whole production reaches a new, uncomfortable level for everyone. Technogloss babe included.
Or maybe it’s just me, who knows.
The rest of the displays are spread around amongst the shoes and jewelry and purses and stuff. They were all impressive – some downright neat – but not surprisingly they were all even less immersive than their runway counterpart. Good for smells and gawks and stuff, but I’m not sure I’d give it a doodle seal of approval and demand you drop everything and go down there (c) last year’s show.
In the end, the pig topiary in front of the Louis Vuitton boutique was an instrospective metaphor (uh, blunder?) too obvious to mention. But not too obvious to photograph. And then to mention. Funny how that works.
Macy’s Minneapolis Flower Show Facts [strib]
Strib’s review of the show [strib] – they seemed to dig it.